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Mob is tough to figure out.
It is perhaps for that reason that Midoriya initially becomes so invested in him. Midoriya has spent the better part of his life figuring things out. He’s got a desk drawer full of hero journals dedicated to figuring things out. Had All Might not named him successor, had he given up on becoming a hero, perhaps he would have become a detective or a P.I.— or maybe he could have simply been hired on as some support company’s quirk strategy consultant. Midoriya is good at thinking. Midoriya knows how to solve a puzzle.
But then there’s Mob, and Mob evades discernment.
Every time Midoriya thinks he’s starting to understand Mob, something happens that shows Midoriya he’s missing some critically important piece. Mob’s got a careful persistence about him, a guarded quiet that is three parts innocuous and one part concerning. On its own, it gives no red flags; Mob is just someone who prefers to think before he speaks. Polite to a fault, maybe a little too shy, but nothing alarming.
It’s in hero training that this emotional barricade becomes problematic.
The strain isn’t always evident.
During the school day, Mob moves with an inexpressive but relaxed ease. He doesn’t laugh at jokes often, but he gets the smallest of smiles. When he’s caught off guard, the anxiety gives him two left feet, and though his face doesn’t betray much, the nervous sweat on his forehead does. Mob doesn’t emote in the usual way, not by a longshot, but once Midoriya knows what to look for, it’s not hard to get a general read on him.
Hero training isn’t like that.
The Mob of hero training is indecipherable to Midoriya. No one else seems to notice, but the moment training starts, some unseeable part of Mob stiffens. As the class changes into their uniforms, its like his very skin becomes rigid. He moves with a seemingly practiced care, his gait even, almost leisurely. Midoriya could almost mistake it for casual, if not for the look in his eyes. Midoriya’s not sure what to call it. It’s not particularly angry, nor scared, nor sad, it’s… focused, perhaps. On what, he isn’t sure.
It’s something Midoriya mulls over one day as the class lines up for the exercise debrief.
All Might beams down in his usual manner. Today’s class is about strategy, he explains, about using your head instead of just your fists. (He stops a moment to concede that fists are, of course, an appropriate tool to use as well.)
The viewing monitor flickers to life on the wall behind him with a map of the training course, as well as the villainbots which will pursue them. They’re identical in every way to the one-point enemies from the entrance exam, save for the fact that they’re no longer one-point difficulty. The students be paired up at random. The only objective is for each pair to safely escort their citizen from Point A to Point B— to illustrate, the points appear on the map and a long red line crawls across the streets to connect them.
It’s a good assignment for getting them used to strategizing, Midoriya reasons. They can’t very well rely on brute strength to keep citizens safe from villains— somehow, they have to figure out how they’re going to keep innocents away from the line of fire. The most straightforward plan would be to avoid villainbots entirely, but with the roster randomized, there’s no guarantee that will be an option for every group.
Midoriya doesn’t seem to be the only one who has realized this. Several of his classmates are shooting inconspicuous glances around the room, trying to measure up how good of a chance they have at being paired with someone compatible. Midoriya, too, finds himself immediately seeking out someone. To his left, several feet in front of him, Mob turns his head almost imperceptibly. Midoriya catches his eye and gives him a smile. Yes, you, he thinks as hard as he can, on the off chance that Mob is telepathic and can hear his thoughts. I hope it’s you. For a moment, the intensity in Mob’s gaze seems to soften— then he turns his head back.
Midoriya shifts his attention to the monitor on the wall. The class roster appears on screen, shuffling through names and faces at a breakneck pace. Midoriya watches them, holding his breath as they blur past. The first pair is the unluckiest. Everyone else has a chance to learn from their mistakes and additional time to start to formulate a strategy, but the first pair has only a few minutes to prepare. The names slow and settle.
Mob and Bakugo’s faces stare down from the monitor.
There’s an uncomfortable pull in Midoriya’s chest. He glances back to where Mob stands, unchanged save for his hands. With measured care, he slowly curls them into fists.
-
"You take this stupid thing and carry it to the end point. I’ll take care of the villainbots. Stay out of my way.”
Without another word, Bakugo shoves their citizen into Mob’s hands and sprints away. He makes it halfway up the block, then uses his quirk to get himself airborne, scales the wall of a building, and disappears from sight.
The citizen, as it turns out, is a baby doll with a lazy eye. It stares up at Mob blankly. Mob returns the stare for a moment, trying to squelch the churning in his stomach. He’s not one for strategy— he’s not like Ritsu, not like Midoriya. The plan seems… okay. Bakugo has a powerful quirk. It’s naturally loud and it matches his personality. Using him as a distraction is the obvious choice. All Mob has to do is avoid the places where Bakugo is and keep from drawing attention to himself.
“Ah,” Mob says, then reaches up to activate the communicator clipped to his ear. “What route are you going to take?”
Silence on the other end. Bakugo must have taken it off.
Well, there’s nothing else Mob can do about it. It’s a little over two kilometers to point B. He’d better get going.
Mob sets off at a jog, clutching the baby doll to his chest. Despite his natural weakness and seeming inability to quickly develop muscles or stamina, the two years in the body improvement club weren’t for nothing. It’s six or seven blocks to the end point. Just a little over a kilometer. Mob can jog that far.
He hears, occasionally, the distant sound of explosions. Sometimes they draw closer, and Mob prepares for the worst, but they always recede. Bakugo is working hard. Mob almost feels like they’re cheating on this assignment, and yet... in the face of sheer power, perhaps strategy is ineffective.
He’s incredibly grateful. This is going better than he expected.
As if on cue, there are several explosions a few blocks to Mob’s right. It’s not the closest they’ve been, but it’s near enough that Mob picks up the pace. He’s only two blocks away now.
At the intersection directly in front of him, coming from the left hand side, three villain bots roll into view, heading in the direction of the explosions. Mob gasps, tripping over his feet as he tries to get out of sight, but it’s too late— they’ve spotted him.
Immediately, there is a barrage of gunfire. Mob throws up a telekinetic barrier and tightens his grip on the baby doll.
He tries the radio again. “Bakugo, I need help. The villainbots found me.”
Nothing.
Two of the villainbots cruise down the street towards him. The distance is closing fast. Mob reminds himself he’s protecting a citizen. They’re robots, they’re not even people. He’s allowed to do this. He’s not going to lose control if he does this.
He carefully raises a hand and his barrier dissipates. With a sickening crunch, the villainbot closest to him collapses inward like crumpled tin foil. Driven by momentum, it crashes down, tumbling across the pavement, still coming much too quickly— Mob reaches to grab it, maybe throw it into the other villainbot, but as they close in only meters away from him, the crumpled one explodes.
It happens in slow motion. Mob is knocked off his feet by it, and he watches the baby doll soar through the air above him. The lazy eye, jostled by the blast, winks at him over and over. He feels like someone is slowly pouring a bucket of ice water down the back of neck. It’s a horrible cold that fills him from the top down. There’s debris and fire in the air, bits of pavement and shrapnels of metal— hundreds of tiny projectiles, ready to shred this infant apart because Mob was—
—was stupid, was reckless , was careless with his quirk—
Mob hits the pavement flat on his back and bounces once. It knocks the wind out of his lungs. It doesn’t stop him. He throws himself upright, reaching out with his quirk and sealing the baby doll in a spherical barrier. He yanks it back to him so quickly he grunts in pain when it slams into his chest, but he’s already on his feet. The other villainbot was damaged in the explosion— Mob seals it in a barrier just as it, too, explodes. The fire harmlessly burns itself out as the third villainbot takes off towards him.
Mob realizes that his ears are ringing. The explosion was loud. Other villainbots will be coming for him.
Air surges back into Mob’s lungs and he inhales deeply. The way forward is cut off. The baby doll’s hair is slightly singed, and she’s smeared with soot. There’s a nick in the plastic of her forehead. Mob feels sick.
He turns and sprints down an alleyway to his left.
Mob can feel the power of his quirk humming under his skin, and he tries in vain to calm himself. There’s a crashing noise as the villainbot finds out the hard way that the alley is too narrow. Mob bursts out into the next street. There’s already another villainbot coming from his right, so he takes off in the opposite direction. Running away is a strategy, he decides. Running away is absolutely a strategy. The villainbots are fast, but they’re intended to be a stand-in for real villains, so Mob can probably outrun them. For now.
He continues like this for too long, turning at random any time he finds his path blocked. He’s sure it’s the same four villainbots tailing him, but it seems that they themselves have come up with a strategy against him. It’s a game of cat and mouse. Mob is running out of steam.
He realizes that he doesn’t know where he is. Mob glances up and down the street, trying to think back and retrace his steps in his mind. Where is the endpoint from here? His heart is hammering in his chest. Which way did he come from? How far has he gone?
“ What the Hell are you doing?! ”
Mob spins on his heel as Bakugo rockets over the roof of the building beside him. Mob thinks it should be pretty obvious what he’s doing, but he’s panting so hard he can barely speak, so he says nothing. Bakugo sprints past him, throwing several explosions at one of the closer villanbots. “You were supposed to get to the end point!”
Bakugo’s not alone, Mob discovers, as several more villainbots arrive from the next street over.
Mob’s brain is running a thousand miles a minute. How long has it been since the exercise started? They’re running out of time. Bakugo can’t take down all these villainbots by himself and get the baby doll to the end point. Mob isn’t sure he’ll be able to make it to the end point himself— his chest burns and his head is swimming.
Mob, for the first time in recent memory, makes an executive decision. “Bakugo,” he says, and the baby doll flies out of his hands and directly into Bakugo’s chest. “Go to the end point. I’ll keep them occupied.” Bakugo opens his mouth to object, but Mob shakes his head. “We’ll lose any other way.”
Mob turns away. He hears footsteps receding and what he’s sure are many grumbled insults, but he isn’t listening. He feels like there’s an incredible pressure inside of him, and if he isn’t careful, he knows it’s going to pop. He’ll use his powers as little as possible— he just has to play bait for a few minutes. His heart beats painfully against his ribs. He puts up a barrier— not a sphere or a wall, just a second skin.
There are five villainbots approaching.
-
Midoriya furrows his brow, watching the monitor intently. Uraraka stands beside him. Her mouth is pressed into a thin line. On the screen, Mob sprints down the street, clinging the baby doll so tightly Midoriya can practically feel the plastic digging into his ribs.
“Why doesn’t he attack them again? It would give him a chance to get his bearings. He could correct his route,” Uraraka says.
“It looks like the doll got singed in the first explosion— I think he’s afraid of it getting caught in the crossfire.”
—
Uraraka nods, but she doesn’t seem satisfied. “...Can’t he put a bubble around the doll?”
Midoriya has been wondering the same thing. “I don’t know why he doesn’t,” he admits. “Maybe it’s harder to attack and defend at the same time? He doesn’t seem very focused right now. Maybe it takes more energy.”
The current camera isn’t a very close view, but Mob looks exhausted. He’s been running hard.
Bakugo appears suddenly, and the two exchange words— if Bakugo shouting and Mob passing him the doll hard enough to threaten his balance could be called ‘exchanging words’.
Then it’s just Mob, alone.
“Oh! I see,” Uraraka says, smiling suddenly. “Now that Mob doesn’t have to worry about attacking and defending at the same time, he can just get rid of the villainbots himself! They changed their strategy.”
Iida nods sagely. “To think Kageyama was able to work with someone like Bakugo with such ease… we can learn from him.”
Sero pulls a face. “You think that’s what this is?” He glances between Iida, Uraraka, and the screen. Mob still hasn’t moved. The villainbots seem to be assessing the situation. “I don’t know. Something feels off.”
Midoriya doesn’t answer. Sero is right.
Mob takes a step forward, hands down at his sides. This is enough for the villainbots, who at last spring into action. Two flank either side of Mob and swing enormous, heavy arms down at him. Instead of attacking, Mob throws himself forward, narrowly avoiding getting crushed between them. Robbed of their initial target and left with too much momentum, the two bots slam into each other instead. They cleave each other apart and crumple. Mob rights himself, but not fast enough; another villainbot swing an arm around and catches him from behind. Mob tumbles like a ragdoll several yards, then lurches to his feet. It’s faint, but Midoriya can just barely see the outline of Mob’s barrier on his skin. Could it have absorbed all the shock? He doesn’t seem heavily injured, but… why not use a stronger barrier? Why continue to defend at all?
One of the bots activates some kind of laser and Mob scrambles out of the way. He glances up and down the street. Midoriya swallows hard. Why doesn’t he use his quirk? The laser continues tattooing a dark, ugly scar into the pavement. Mob takes a running leap up behind one of the villainbots, jumping on its back. He tightens his grip and tries to pull his knees to his chest. Midoriya gasps as the bot falls for the play; the laser slices the bot Mob is piggybacking clean in half, and Mob topples uncerimoniously down with the top half of the bot.
“Oh— Mob ,” Uraraka breathes.
Midoriya’s heart leaps into his throat as he watches Mob struggle to stand. He didn’t tuck his knees in time— the laser caught across the middle of his calves. His barrier deflected the worst of it, it seems, but it burned through the fabric it touched, and the skin is shiny red with alarming intensity. Mob collapses back on the ground, but he pushes himself up on his elbows. One of the two remaining villainbots rushes him and swings to bring a mighty arm crashing down on the pavement. Mob throws himself to the side, rolling out of the way. The other arm goes up and comes down on Mob’s new position— again, he lunges to the side. An anxious spark of telekinetic aura flares up around Mob, and is squelched as quickly as it came.
It snaps Midoriya out of his dazed horror. He spins, finding his voice. “All Might—”
The buzzer sounds before he can get the rest of his sentence out. The villainbots power down immediately. Bakugo stands at the end point, holding up the baby doll in one hand, glowering at the camera.
“Young Bakugo has reached the end point with the citizen,” All Might announces. He’s got all the intensity of his gaze focused on the screens. His smile is strained. “Good work.”
On the screen, Mob relaxes and drops flat on his back. Bakugo turns and dashes the doll against the ground with all his might.
Mob is carried to Recovery Girl.
-
Midoriya and Jirou’s names appear next on the screen.
They step off to a corner of the room and discuss their strategy as the course is reset. Jirou gives Midoriya a relaxed smile. “I think Bakugo and Mob had the right idea, but we’ll need to be careful so one of us doesn’t get stuck in a situation we can’t get out of.”
Midoriya rests his chin in his hand thoughtfully. “I think it’s best if we stick together.” He shoves Mob to the back of his mind as best he can. He needs to focus, if for no one else but Jirou. “I was thinking— if we can get up onto the roofs and travel that way, we’d have a better vantage point, and it would be easier to hide if the villainbots get too close. It seemed like they were only patrolling the streets.”
“I don’t know. It’s good in theory, but the gaps between the buildings may be too wide for us. Neither of us has a quirk that— well, I mean, I guess you could , but…” Jirou trails off, gesturing towards his legs and grimacing.
“Right,” Midoriya says. “Right. Different plan.”
They swap ideas for a few more minutes, but there’s little use. Jirou’s quirk is well-suited to this; all they have to do is take their time and be careful. Sometimes, simple is best.
The streets are quiet when they step out onto the training course, but Midoriya knows better. He stills, waiting as Jirou plugs herself into the pavement, listening carefully.
“There’s a squad of three two streets over, and one by itself a little ways in that direction,” Jirou announces, pointing first to her right and then a little bit further forward. “Let’s head this way for a block or so.” Midoriya nods.
They carry on this way for a while. It’s not as easy as they had anticipated. Sometimes, even regular talking voices are enough to pique the villainbots’ sensors, but they manage to remain undetected. There are some particularly close calls, but Midoriya has the forethought to pick up rocks as he walks, and when the villainbots get too close for comfort, he throws one as far away as he can without activating his quirk.
It’s a bit too simple, maybe, but it gets the job done. Besides, he has a feeling the sound from the blast of energy and his finger breaking would immediately alert the bot to their hiding place. He may not be the biggest asset in today’s exercise, but he’s proud that he at least hasn’t dragged Jirou down.
“Any luck?” Midoriya whispers. Jirou furrows her brow, listening hard. They’ve nearly reached the end point, but the density of villainbots has steadily increased the closer they’ve gotten. Her eyebrows shoot up suddenly and she grins. “Yeah—” her ear jack pops out of the wall— “we should be able to get through in just a second.”
Midoriya opens his mouth to respond. He is stopped when the baby doll in his hands emits an audible click .
The doll starts wailing, a piercing shriek that echoes down the street.
“Wha— ?!” Midoriya jumps, nearly dropping the doll, then flips it over in his hands. There’s no off switch, no button he can press to make it stop.
Jirou pulls it out of his grasp and shakes it. “What happened?!” She hisses.
It clicks. “This is part of the exercise,” Midoriya whispers with horror. “Which means—”
“Run!” Jirou tucks the doll under one arm and takes off down the street, Midoriya close behind. The villainbots are already responding, flooding in from all directions. Midoriya clenches his fists and grits his teeth. They’ll never make it at this rate.
The image of Mob, still and resolute and sending Bakugo on without him, pops into Midoriya’s head. Something simultaneously warm and cold settles in his chest. Even with the baffling resolve to not utilize his quirk, Mob still…
Midoriya hastens his step and runs up alongside Jirou. “I’m going to clear a path,” he says between pants, “and you just run straight to the end point.”
Jirou’s brow furrows. “But wait— how are you going to— ?”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be fine!” Midoriya says, forcing the biggest smile he can onto his face. He’s sure it doesn’t look as confident as he wishes it did, but it’s all he can do for now.
He dashes ahead.
The primary issue is a cluster of seven or eight villainbots coming up from the front of the street. The street isn’t particularly wide. They’re crammed together so tightly they might as well be a moving wall. If Midoriya can take care of that, Jirou can simply outrun the bots behind them. The end point is in sight as long as she can make it around this final obstacle.
Well. Simple is best, sometimes.
Midoriya dashes to the jumble of villainbots, pulls his right fist back, and with a running leap, smashes the bot in the front with everything he’s got.
The destruction is immediate, both to the horde of bots and to Midoriya’s arm. It’s like knocking over a line of dominos, if the dominos were giant killing machines and the end result of the rube goldberg shot a bowling ball through your limbs at the speed of light. He grits his teeth, screwing his eyes shut against the wave of pain and nausea that threatens to topple him, and blindly stumbles backwards. The robots have a habit of exploding, he reminds himself, and though the punch threw whatever was left of the bots a dozen meters up the street, he doesn’t want to risk anything. He cracks an eye open.
He needn’t have worried. There’s barely anything intact enough to explode.
“Midoriya!” Jirou calls from behind him. “Are you okay?”
He turns and gives her whatever it is that he can currently call a smile.
“You go on—” Midoriya gasps, walking back towards the remaining approaching villainbots. “I’ll keep ‘em busy.”
Jirou doesn’t need to be told twice. The second she’s past him, Midoriya stops walking. It jostles his arm too much. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. He grits his teeth again and braces his left forefinger against his thumb.
The remaining half dozen or so villainbots fall upon him at once in a haze of metal and electronic whirring. Midoriya inhales, holds the breath, and flicks his finger. It takes out one of the bots, and he spins around, trying to ignore the second wave of nausea and the tears that prick into his eyes. He braces his middle finger, deftly ducking to the side as a bot swings at him. One for All explodes out of his finger again, and he hisses involuntarily even as pride swells in his chest. He knows he can do this.
It’s a sensation that is replaced by the dizzying feeling of his blood turning to ice as Midoriya turns just in time to see an enormous, metallic fist close the distance to his face faster than he can move to avoid it.
The world goes black with a clang and a crunch.
-
When Midoriya opens his eyes again, he’s staring at the ceiling of Recovery Girl’s office. Most of his body is sore, and though he was just asleep, he feels exhausted. The light from the windows is orange and dim.
The fragments of his last few moments awake fall into place. Midoriya scowls, closing his eyes with a sigh. So, he couldn’t do it after all. It was stupid of him to even try— Mob couldn’t even do it, and he was—
Midoriya sits up with a jolt, glancing wildly around the room— but he needn’t have bothered. The rest of the cots are empty. Mob is nowhere in sight.
Recovery Girl comes over to him, face as stern as she can make it. Mob, it seems, was sent home hours ago— his burns were bad, but not so bad he had to sleep off the healing process. Midoriya, on the other hand, nursing a broken arm, seven broken fingers, and whatever the blunt force trauma had done to him— well. She had taken care of Midoriya’s injuries and left him to rest. Now that he’s awake, Recovery Girl tucks a pack of vitamin gummies into his hand and sends him on his way with yet another warning about overdoing it.
Midoriya sullenly considers it while he changes back into his uniform. What else can he do? He needs to hone his quirk, but he can’t do that without using it, but he can’t use it without hurting himself. It’s a dead end on every side.
It’s embarrassing, to be perfectly honest, and it spells nothing but certain doom for his future. Midoriya has come so far, has worked so hard— does he dare think harder than anyone? He’s only had these classmates for a few short weeks. The first trimester hasn’t even ended. He doesn’t know, not for sure, but as he considers the months and months of endless training, of intense study, both mental and physical, of blood and sweat and tears— plenty of blood, too much sweat, and far more tears than he’s willing to admit—
Maybe, just this once, Midoriya will let himself believe he’s worked harder than anyone.
And after everything, he’s just going to lose it all because he can’t control it.
As he gathers the rest of his things from the classroom and heads to the front of the school, he again thinks of Mob, standing resolute but inactive against the villainbots. Of Mob, tossed unceremoniously across the pavement— of the crumbling asphalt, and of the robot fist-shaped holes in the street, only inches away from their intended target… Midoriya swallows hard. Even to save himself, he wouldn’t use his quirk.
Midoriya knows it’s not for lack of ability. He’s heard Sero’s enthusiastic retelling of Mob coming to his rescue, which he’s certain he knows mainly because of the clips shown in Sero’s own UA acceptance video; by the sounds of it, Sero was more concussed than conscious when it happened. What Midoriya wouldn’t give to have access to the recordings of their hero test. He’s taken notes on Sero’s recounts, on the bits of information Mob has divulged, on what he’s seen for himself. He’s taken a lot of notes on Mob. From the few times Mob has utilized his quirk in training, Midoriya has been awestruck by the seeming scale of the raw power hidden behind a politely deadpan face.
And yet, with his perfectly measured movements and painstakingly dispassioned actions, Mob wields almost none of it.
“Ah, Midoriya.”
Midoriya jumps, spinning around. Propped up against the front wall of the school is Mob. He gets to his feet, dusting off his pants.
“Mob?” Midoriya hurries over to him, picking up his bag and holding it out to him. “What are you still doing here?”
Mob accepts the bag with a grateful nod. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. I saw what happened in the video.”
“The video” is most likely whatever saved footage All Might has of Midoriya’s training exercise, and he doesn’t doubt for an instant that All Might showed it to Mob. If Mob has been hanging out around the school grounds for the past few hours, All Might probably offered to show him his own footage and then… Would All Might have shown him Midoriya’s footage unprompted? Would Mob have asked?
Midoriya forces his thoughts to what he’s sure are more pressing matters. “Don’t you still have your job? Shouldn’t you be there?”
Mob digs into his pocket for a moment, then holds up his cell phone. “I called my master and told him I can’t come today.”
“Oh.” It’s all Midoriya can say. He should feel incredibly touched that Mob cared about his well-being so much, but instead all he feels is embarrassed. “You didn’t have to go out of your way. I’m fine.”
Mob gives him a little hm in response. It’s perfectly noncommittal and almost frustratingly open to interpretation. They fall into step as they leave the school grounds.
“How are you feeling?” Midoriya asks.
“I’m fine.”
He sounds fine. Not great, not bad, but fine.
Midoriya inspects what he can see of the side of Mob’s face. He’s not sure what he’s looking for. No secret answer leaps out of Mob’s indifferent features.
“I was worried,” Midoriya ventures. “About you, I mean.”
Mob glances at him. “Why?”
Midoriya lets out a breathy laugh in spite of himself. “I mean— the robot almost crushed you! You could have gotten really hurt! And your legs… why didn’t you protect yourself?”
Mob returns his attention to the sidewalk in front of them. “I don’t think that’s all that bad,” he says softly. “You get hurt worse than that almost every class.”
Midoriya isn’t sure how to respond to that. It’s true, as much as he hates to admit it. Had he not been knocked unconscious, he probably would have quietly nursed his broken limbs and watched out the rest of the matches to take mental notes before heading to Recovery Girl’s office. Today was worse than normal, sure, but it was part of a pattern. He swallows hard, guiltily aware that as often as he worries about Mob’s injuries, his own injuries are often far greater, and occur with much more alarming frequency. “I’m… working on it.” Midoriya forces a smile, turning back towards Mob. “Maybe if I had been paired with you, we could have figured something out.”
Mob doesn’t look at him. He’s quiet for a moment, then shakes his head. “No. My quirk wouldn’t have been helpful.”
“It would have been,” Midoriya presses. “Your barriers are really strong— you beat that one villainbot without even breaking a sweat.”
Mob stops walking.
“No,” he says slowly, choosing his words more carefully. “It would have been bad to use my quirk.”
Midoriya stops walking as well. He, too, chooses his words carefully. “Does something bad happen if you overuse your quirk?”
“Not exactly.”
Then what? The question is right on Midoriya’s tongue, but he has a feeling that leaving this question open-ended will do neither him nor Mob any favors.
As he mulls over what to say next, Mob surprises him by turning suddenly and asking, “Why do you use your quirk the way you use it?”
Midoriya’s so caught off by the question he can only manage an incredibly intelligent-sounding, “Huh?”
Mob starts walking again. Midoriya follows him. “Every time you use your quirk, you know you’re about to hurt yourself. But you still use it.” Mob’s gaze wanders for a moment, then finally settles somewhere slightly to the right of Midoriya’s head. “I don’t get it.”
“I guess…” Midoriya trails off, thinking, then starts again. “I’d rather do something that I know will definitely hurt me if it means I have a chance of stopping someone else from getting hurt. If being a hero means I have to do that, then that’s what I’m willing to do”
Mob’s eyes snap to his for just a second, then pull away. “I don’t like seeing you get hurt.” His expression is unreadable. “You or the rest of our class,” he adds after a moment.
“I don’t really like it all that much, either,” Midoriya says, cracking a small grin. Mob doesn’t return it. They walk up the steps of the train station in silence.
Midoriya tries another approach. “Your quirk is strong, but it’s not like Bakugo’s or Todoroki’s. You don’t really have to worry about accidentally hurting other people with it. It’s good for protecting others. When you use it… it’s like you can really tell how much you’ve practiced honing it. You control it really well.”
Mob makes a sound that Midoriya can’t identify.
After too long of a pause, he quips, “I don’t.”
Midoriya blinks. “What do you mean?” When Mob says nothing, he continues. “I mean… you seem to know how to make it do exactly what you want it to do. With mine, the second I try to do anything, I…” He makes a sort of ‘ker-pow’ noise with his mouth, gesturing for effect. “It’s like it has a mind of its own. I always hurt myself.”
Mob hums quietly. “I think… our quirks are more alike than you think they are. We just have the opposite effect.”
Midoriya slows, considering those words with unnecessary care as he swipes his train card and passes through the gate. Something cold and thick settles in the pit of his stomach.
“Mob,” he asks, “what do you mean?”
Mob stops. He’s running his thumb across the seams on the handle of his bag, over and over.
“I’m glad you’re okay, Midoriya,” he says at last. “See you tomorrow.”
And he disappears in the direction of his platform, leaving Midoriya to find his own.